Cooking, Recipes, Wine............ and Ethical Foie Gras - At Last!

They've got oats so they must be good for you.  Not just for the kiddies these - everyone loves them.

Ingredients:

115g unsalted butter at room temperature

85g light brown muscavado sugar

1 large egg, beaten

60g self raising flour (or almond powder or a mix of the two)

1/2 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

115g porridge oats

175g dark chocolate, roughly chopped into chunks

Grease a big baking sheet and preheat the oven to 180 deg C so that you're ready.

Beat the butter until creamy (easiest with an electric mixer but you can use a wooden spoon energetically)

Add the sugar and keep beating until it's light and creamy.

Gradually beat in the egg and keep beating after the last addition.

Sift in the flour (or almond powder / mix), baking powder, salt (most baking powder doesn't really need this), then add the vanilla essence and the oats.  When thoroughly combined, mix in the chocolate.

Work the mix with your hands and roll out balls which you can pat down just very gently onto the baking sheet.  Leave plenty of space between each one because they spread quite a lot.

Cook for 12-15 mins until they're just golden (they don't go quite as dark if you use almond powder) then leave to cool for a few mins before transferring to a wire rack.

You can freeze these cookies if you really want but they generally get eaten too quickly for that.  Store in an airtight container.